A Special Story: Gimpy the Dog

As I have mentioned in previous posts, Bhutan has an uncountable number of stray dogs.  In the cities they can be seen lounging on street medians or in shop doorways, and the evenings both in town and on trek were often filled with the sound of dogs barking in unison as they headed out on a hunt.

We were warned at the beginning of the trip to steer clear of these dogs; they are not necessarily tame, and someone had actually been bitten on a previous trip.  So we all proceeded cautiously, especially at first.

But we learned after a few days on trek that there was a certain kind of dog who, while not exactly tame, appreciated human companionship and the classic pooch pastime of taking a long walk. These were the trekking dogs.

We had several of them join us along our trek- for just a few hours over a lunch break or even for several days. Many of them we even gave names as they walked alongside us.  For me, the most memorable of these dogs was Gimpy.

Gimpy joined us on Day 3 - just as we were getting to higher elevations and the edge of tree line. He stood out immediately because he walked on only three legs - the fourth dragged beneath him without bearing any weight. 

Amazingly, Gimpy seemed to move around just fine... He would jog easily from the back of our group to the front, wander off to sniff something, and then rejoin us in the middle of the pack.

Our guides told us that he had been disabled since puppyhood- perhaps even since birth.  His waist looked tiny, as though he was nearly starving... And so we all found ourselves reaching out to him, despite the warnings we had been given about being too friendly with the dogs.

In return, Gimpy did what none of the other dogs had done... He wagged furiously - and then we knew that he appreciated the attention.

We instantly all fell for him.  Several of us took turns smuggling food out after breakfast or dinner for him... or trying to give him our snacks on trail during the day.

As it turned out, Gimpy wasn't starving.  Actually, he was quite picky about his food!  Several of us (myself included) got politely snubbed after trying to feed him something he didn't deem worthy.  He liked eggs and jerky - but definitely not nuts or vegetables.  He even turned down a hunk of hot dog, to which one of our group said, 'what kind of self-respecting dog doesn't like hot dogs??'

But instead of losing interest, his pickiness just made us try harder. We knew now that he was with us for the companionship more than the food - and we loved it - but we were convinced that he needed feeding too. 

Gimpy stayed with us for almost four days, hauling himself up and down some of the hardest terrain we hiked. We would wake in the morning to find him curled up and frost-covered amidst our tents.  He even joined us on our acclimation hike- an up and back route that he clearly knew was a dead end, because he laid down for a nap at our destination before we had all even arrived there!

On the day of our first 16,000ft pass, we saw Gimpy hiking with us just below the top.  In our enthusiasm to summit, we lost track of him, and we realized at camp that night that he was no longer with us.  We were all sad, but we figured we had passed the edge of his territory and that he had turned back to find a new group. So we continued on our way.

We hiked over passes, down mountainsides, along rivers, and finally through forests to the end of our trek. We came off trail, had our delicious catered lunch and said goodbye to the horses and crew.

Finally, we lined up to climb on our bus to Thimphu. Just as we were about to step on the bus, I looked down... And there was Gimpy.

We have no idea what route he took, or how he possibly made it to our destination right at that moment.  All we knew was that he had come to say goodbye.